Mere Extravangancy
by afewreelthoughts
Summary: A former pirate captain rescues a young passenger from the wreck of their ship, beginning a friendship that will leave both of them changed. (Antonio x Sebastian)
1. A Witchcraft Drew Me Hither

_Let me yet know of you whither you are bound. _

_No, sooth, sir: my determinate voyage is mere extravagancy_.

~ _Twelfth Night_ 2.1

The men on the ship accepted my name as Claudio and didn't ask about the straps of cloth and leather that I kept wrapped around my wrists day in and day out, hiding the brand of a pirate. There was another sailor with us named Antonio, but he could go by his given name without fear of arrest. I could not. Our ship, a small vessel that seemed to promise a respite from trouble, was employed carrying cargo from Messaline to Venice that no one would bother stealing. In a crew of two dozen, we had only two passengers: Roderigo, who called himself a merchant's son, and Roderigo's mystery guest who never left his room. Only the captain visited the guest's cabin, and the other sailors wasted no time guessing at who lodged behind that door: illustrious nobleman, notorious criminal, or illicit love?

I didn't care. Because we got to see Roderigo.

The young man entrusted with the cargo of our ship, Roderigo was no older than eighteen or twenty and had the face of an angel. He glowed with joy and energy and wonder at the world. When he spoke with the captain or other members of the crew, he often tried to affect snobbish indifference, looking down his nose and pursing his lips. But anyone could see through it to an aching desire to be heard despite youth and innocence nothing could hide. Sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, he stood at the side of the ship, smiling and tilting his freckled nose into the wind.

Having someone so beautiful on board put a skip in my step. The captain, bless his soul, thought it was merely my enthusiasm for good hard work and commended my diligence.

One afternoon days before the storm, when I was sitting on a barrel on the main deck and coiling rope, Gonzalo noticed that my eyes were nowhere near my task. "Think 'e's pretty, Claudio?" Gonzalo settled next to me, leaning against the rail. He was fond of giving fatherly advice, which he lavished on any man smaller than him, younger than him, or whose beard was shorter than his. This included everyone on the ship. I could feel a torrent of boring good sense coming on, so I shrugged and kept my eyes on our young passenger. Roderigo's arms swung as he walked. He always seemed so unconscious of his beauty, and so keen to notice everything around him, which made me wonder what land he came from where men looked out and not in.

"Everybody thinks he's pretty."

"I don't see everybody watchin' 'is every move like a cat lookin' at a bowl of cream."

"A cat can look at a king."

"But 'e can't hope to fuck one."

I screwed up my face. "I said nothing about fucking." My gaze followed Roderigo as he crossed the length of the ship. The breeches he was wearing fit snug on his slender body. I bit my lip.

"You're a soddin' idiot! Stop starin'." Gonzalo shoved me. "I knew a man got 'imself in jail for lookin' at the wrong…" Here he lifted a bushy gray eyebrow.

"Ass?"

"It happens." He spoke as if his words imparted wisdom it was beyond my ability to understand. His fingers ran along the piece of driftwood he was forming into the shape of an anchor. He barely looked at the materials in his hands when he worked. I often worried he'd lose a finger, and I didn't want to be around to see it.

"I'm not worried about that. Broken out of jail before."

"What landed you in jail, Claudio?" He spoke almost indulgently. "Stealing a loaf of bread?"

I considered for a moment before answering. "Captaining a pirate ship."

"Ya arrogant sod!" he pushed my arm. "Makin' up stories." Roderigo was running a hand through his dark curls again and looking out to sea. Gonzalo left me, and I tore my eyes away from our beautiful passenger.

I didn't set eyes on Roderigo again until a storm drove our ship onto the rocks off the coast of Illyria, the ones keeping all sensible folk out, or something sinister in.

Nearly two days after the ship shattered to bits, the storm started up again. Winter was coming on strong, and four of us huddled close on a small raft.

"We are in the Mediterranean," Lorenzo clutched a prayerbook to his chest. I couldn't think how he'd swum to safety holding it. "How is this cold possible?"

"Happens in Illyria and near it. Cold winds come from the north and gather over the sea," I spoke quickly from memory. "There is nothing to stop them above the country, just small hills. The winds cool the water, making storms here more deadly." I stared ahead blankly and saw something bobbing in the waves behind us.

"Marvelous." Gianni only ever spoke in single, dolorous words. Now was no exception.

"Then let us pray to the Lord for our deliverance," Lorenzo said, his lips shaking with cold.

I didn't point out that we were headed safely to shore and if we'd all survived two days without food or water, we would survive another hour easily. I didn't point out that we had delivered ourselves with no help from God. I just pointed.

"I'm all for praying," Gonzalo stroked his beard and rested his hands. He had been rowing us towards shore for the past hour.

"Look," I said. At my words, Lorenzo stared at the Heavens. I didn't know whether to laugh or strike him with his own prayers. "Look. Someone is there." All eyes turned to the waves. Nothing but water, then a wave lifted up the figure of a man floating on a shard of the ship. He wasn't moving.

"Dead," Gianni said.

"You don't know that." My voice grew heavy and earnest, beyond my own understanding. "You can't know that."

"Who is it?" Gonzalo asked.

"I don't see him," said Lorenzo. "Neither do I, Claudio."

"He's right there. Clinging to a piece of the ship, just like us. Look at him." And they all tried in earnest, straining their eyes to the horizon.

Gonzalo gave me a smile. "If he is indeed dead, we should offer him our prayers."

"If he is indeed dead, I doubt he needs our prayers!"

"Everyone needs a prayer, Claudio," Gonzalo said. I rubbed my hands together until they stung with the sensation and watched the man fade into the distance as the waves grew higher and the wind whistled past.

"What if it's..."

"What if it's gorgeous Roderigo?" Gonzalo rolled his eyes at me.

Gianni treated us to a rare two sentences. "Then he's a foolish rich boy who's gone and gotten himself killed. Thought ya hated rich boys."

The rain was turning the air gray, and I couldn't see him clearly anymore. My heart leapt into my throat. "We can turn around."

"We can't, Claudio." Gonzalo picked up our makeshift oars and continued rowing to shore.

"We can't leave a man behind."

Roderigo had hollered the same when Lorenzo went overboard our first day out. The captain had noticed and turned around, but Roderigo, so worried that we'd not arrive in time, paced the deck, calling for help. He'd picked up a coil of rope and threw it overboard. It did no good, and you could say nothing he did did any good, but when we pulled Lorenzo up from the water, Roderigo smiled brilliantly and wrapped his arms around the sodden man. "Are you alright?"

"Fine. Surprised you came back so quickly, sir."

"Why would you think we wouldn't come back for you?" No one had gone back for the men we lost in Illyria. Watching them toss water this way and that put knots inside me that would never come undone.

"Some wouldn't, sir." At those words, Roderigo's face fell and his lips opened, unable to form words. His breaths came shallow. He walked back to his cabin in silence. I had walked towards him without thinking, until the first mate stepped in my way. "Ain't ya got somewhere to be, sailor?"

I took one more step. He grabbed hold of my wrist. "What ya think yer doin'? Get back in your place."

"What ya think yer doin?" But this time the voice didn't come from a memory. The cold came up to my neck as I pushed the water away in front of me and Gonzalo hollered through the rain.

"Leave the soddin' nobleman, Claudio! We won't come back for you."

The old man's voice grew comically faint as I swam into the storm. I heard only one more dolorous word from the raft.

"Dead."


	2. From The Sea's Enraged & Foamy Mouth

I realized how right Gianni prediction might be only when their raft was a dot in the distance. The joyful possibility of saving Roderigo's life had given way to the reality of how cold the water was and how heavy I felt in it. I kicked until my boots came loose, and for a moment I considered shedding my purse of coins, but instead clung to it the same way Lorenzo clutched his book of prayers.

When I finally reached what looked to be a piece of the hull, sides curved up like a large hand holding its passenger out of the waves, I tried to see inside. I tilted the driftwood, pushed myself out of the water, but nothing worked. Whoever this man was, pulling him into the chilly water would do no good, so I took hold of the small vessel and started towards shore.

More than the cold, more than the weight, not knowing who was held in that wooden hand made me itch near to distraction; and the thought of solving the mystery pushed me forward more than any impulse for Christian charity. The wind howled around us and the water rose and fell, but I knew that I would reach the shore, because dying without knowing whom I died to save seemed too cruel a fate for any man, even in this world. But when I reached the shallows safe and sound, fell to my knees, and gasped for breath, I reconsidered. No thought of the great deed I had done would lessen my disappointment if I'd saved the ill-mannered cook or the fat crewmember who'd shoved me to the ground our first day out, just to prove he was the bigger man. No thought of killing with kindness would comfort me. But disappointment would serve my foolishness well if –

An awful choking came from the raft. I lifted the man within and carried him to dry land. Two heavy claps to the back had Roderigo spitting into the sand. His arms shook with the effort of holding himself up, then he went limp.

"Roderigo? Sir?" I slapped his face gently at first, then harder. He didn't stir. His white skin was dusted with salt and felt far too cold, but his pulse still leapt beneath my fingertips. I lifted him in my arms and followed a column of smoke over a hill that led to a nearby tavern. After pushing his raft for hours, his limp body didn't feel heavy at all. I kicked open the door.

The place was full, but the warm, burly men parted to let me through. The tavern-keeper, another warm, burly man with a cold, cold face, was the only one who seemed unimpressed. So I explained the obvious. "This man needs help."

"This ain't a hospital, sailor."

"I'm not asking for you to make it one. I'm asking for a room." I let Roderigo's feet touch the ground and laid my purse on the bar. The tavern-keeper squeezed it slowly, an obscene gesture directed towards a young woman sitting with her lover across the room, next to the fire.

"How much is a bed - two beds - for a week?"

"How much you got?" He was still talking at the poor woman, who looked away in shame.

My voice dropped to a low growl. "How. Much. Is. It?" He blanched and dropped my purse, sputtering the price. "I'll pay you once we're settled."

I picked up the purse and, swooping Roderigo across my arms again, walked down the hall and kicked open the door to which the tavern-keeper had pointed. I lay the boy on the bed nearest the fire and started peeling off his clothes. His rich suit had been soaked and dried cold as ice to his skin. The bedclothes here seemed thick and warm. If I dragged his bed in front of the fire and removed his icy clothing, the young man's body would have no excuse but to grow warm again. I talked to Roderigo the entire time, cursing the tiny frozen ties holding his clothes closed and my numb, useless fingers.

Heavy footfalls and the jangling of keys stopped by our door. Someone knocked. "Heard a commotion here and... excuse ye, but this floor ain't yers ta soak wet. These wood floors cost money, good money," a heavyset woman said, standing in our doorway with hands on her hips. Water pooled at her feet where I'd thrown off my shirt. "I tell ye, sailor, we don't take no men what can't pay nor none what wreck my fine rooms soon's they set foot indoors."

Roderigo coughed then, a deep, painful hacking.

"We don't need no sick man here neither!"

"This man isn't sick, he's half-drowned. I will taking care of him; you don't need to do a thing."

"We ain't no bawdy-house neither, so if ye give me any reason to suspect that ye are up to no Christian practice with this young man, ye'll be out on the street."

I pressed coins into her accusing hand fit for a week's stay. "Good mistress, this man is half dead. We were shipwrecked here, and you must know how cold the water is." One more coin, "That's for something to warm his bed, please."

Perhaps my tone convinced her that I was in earnest, or coins bought her sense of honor. Either way she accepted my money and returned with a leather flask full of hot water.

Wrapped in warm sheets, and wreathed in as much heat and fire as I could gather, Roderigo thawed. His fingers uncurled and pulled the sheets closer. His chest rose and fell in a comforting rhythm. He slept the rest of that day and into the night. I found I could not sleep and instead fetched water to bathe. With Roderigo's bed still in front of the fire, I made do with cold and shivered as I scrubbed salt from my skin.

Something fragile broke in the noisy inn. Perhaps one of the burly men grew too drunk to hold his glass. The sound stirred Roderigo from sleep. In a moment, I was kneeling at the side of his bed, for modesty's sake, if nothing else.

His eyelids fluttered open. "Who are you?" he said, his words little more than a whisper. I had reached out an open hand to the side of his bed, and his fingers slipped into mine.

"My name is Antonio."


	3. Did I Redeem a Wreck Past Hope

"Antonio," he said. "It's a nice name. You were on the ship," he said, and then murmured something I couldn't hear.

It would do little good to talk about the tragedy now. "Can I get you something to eat?"

His eyes opened wide then, the eyes of a man who'd known hunger for the first time. He nodded.

The tavern kitchen stayed open late, for wandering sailors to spend the last of their coin before they found a destination. "Where you headed?" one of them slurred, as I waited for the tapster to return with Roderigo's meal. I shrugged. His eyes squinted at me. "You're too young to be lost."

I gave him my meanest glare. I've been told it makes me years older. "My destination is not your business."

He shook his head again. "What's that about?" He was silent, and his head still swayed one way, then the other, one way, then the other. I gathered the tray the tapster gave to me.

"You figure that out... or you'll end up like me."

"That is a frightening thought. Good evening." He just looked after me sadly. Drunk men often become more melancholy than anyone has a right to be, and I have learned not to heed them.

When I returned, Roderigo had curled in on himself, tight into a ball. He uncurled when the door opened and he looked up at me if as I were an angel. But when I held up a spoon full of soup, he licked his cracked lips and turned away.

"You said you were hungry."

"I am."

"If that is true, you should eat."

He licked his lips again and rubbed them together in a way that must have hurt. The pain seemed to brace him. "I'm fine."

"If you eat nothing, you will die, Roderigo." He watched the fire, dearly trying not to hear me. "No one wants that."

He looked back at me suddenly, as if my words had startled him. He had deep brown eyes, the kind that look like they go on forever, the kind a man can fall into and never come out of again. In that moment, he had heard not what I had said, but what I meant. Not, "_No one wants that;"_ instead, _"I don't want that."_ There was no one here beyond the two of us to wish him alive or dead.

"Thank you." And then he gave me a beautiful sad smile, like he wanted his face to light up, but knew that it could not. When I held the spoon to his lips again, he accepted it.

Though Roderigo's health improved in the week we spent at that tavern, he said little and smiled rarely. I bought him new clothes made of loose, soft material. He thanked me for them, but on the day he felt strong enough to walk again, put on his old gold brocade. He didn't want any help, he said, but in the middle of the room, his knees buckled. I caught his waist before he hit the ground. His heart pounded and sweat gathered on his lip.

"You should have let me fall."

The loud knock on the door startled him, and he grabbed my shoulders.

"Come in," I said.

The tavern keeper stood in our doorway. "I can see he's not so helpless anymore."

Roderigo's nails dug into my shoulders. His knees shook, but he would not let this man see them buckle. "You see right."

"So you gonna pay me for the night?"

"I paid for a week, and we've stayed for a week." Roderigo had long nails, and they bit into my skin. "I thought we had until the end of the day."

"That ain't policy."

"That's news to me."

"Well, not anymore, it ain't. You'll be out of this room within the hour, or you'll pay for it."

When the door slammed shut, Roderigo collapsed to the floor, panting. I circled the room, gathering our few belongings. "Think you can make it down the street with my help?"

"No."

"Don't you worry, I carried you to this place, I can carry you – "

"No! I'm not moving until I can leave on my own two feet."

"Do you have the money to stay? Because I don't." That was a lie. I had hidden the rest of my purse in a loose hearthstone, not wanting to leave this place without a penny. I pried it loose now and tied it to my belt.

Roderigo stared ahead of him. "Where would we be going?"

"Nowhere." I'd avoid Illyria. That's all I knew. "Where do you want to go? Home?"

"No," he said in such a melancholy tone that I never asked again. "But I can't just wander."

"I have. For a long time now."

"And where's it got you?" he laughed. When I said nothing to that, he sobered. "Oh, Oh God, I'm sorry. That was – " For about a full minute I considered walking out with the money and leaving him. "That was... unkind. I just..." He wouldn't look at me, but I stared at him and hated him for the tears gathering on his cheeks, hated him for not knowing what to say, hated him for his fancy clothes and the ring shining on his right hand. "It's just that... you're treating me like a child."

"You're acting like one," I snapped. "For the first time since I've known you, you're acting like a child."

"Is that all you expected from a rich boy like me?"

"I didn't expect anything from you."

"You've got minutes, Claudio," called the innkeeper.

Roderigo held out his hand, but still didn't look at me. I knelt in front of him, so he had to. "This place isn't far from the nearest town. We're sure to find better hospitality there. Try to cheer yourself a little."

Roderigo met my eyes. "Is it so important?"

"Yes, it is. Roderigo, sir - "

"Don't." He flinched at the title.

"You couldn't walk on your own all this past week. Excuse me for speaking out of turn, but I doubt your body is as weak as your mind. If you wish to walk anywhere on your own two feet, you have to want it. Badly. So try to cheer yourself a little - "

"I don't think I can do that... for you."

"Don't do it for me, do it for – "

"I want to."

I closed my mouth before I realized that it had been hanging open. "Well..." Locks of dark hair fell into his eyes, and I wanted to brush them back. "You can let me help you out of here. You can do that much for me." He took my hand and when we stood, he looked at me a long time before placing an arm around my shoulders, as if something insubstantial were holding him up.


	4. Without Retention or Restraint

The first inn our aimless path happened upon was a warmer, smaller place. This innkeeper was thinner than the last, smiled a great deal and had a nervous habit of twirling his wedding ring around one thin finger when he was nervous. His heart had melted at the sight of Roderigo's weak body, and my story won us the ability to stay gratis, provided that I helped with some of the work he and his wife could not do.

The innkeeper twirled his ring. "I mean, since my son left, and I'm not..." he shrugged and looked down at his thin body, spin "and we can't ask any of the guests..." spin, spin, spin. "We need someone to help with some of the harder work around the place, you know, chopping firewood, moving furniture..."

"I'd be happy to."

"I don't know if we'll be able to pay you," spin, spin, "since we don't have many guests and..."

"We'll negotiate something. There's no need now."

The innkeeper and his wife had settled Roderigo in the most comfortable bed they had and fussed with him until he had no choice but to smile. But it was still a forced smile.

The first crack appeared in Roderigo's melancholic reverie soon after, on a bitter, squishy winter morning that I had spent chopping and carrying firewood. The task was the furthest thing from absorbing, so it came as a welcome surprise to hear Roderigo's voice.

"Hello down there!" When I turned towards the inn, Roderigo was resting his arms on his windowsill on the second story.

"You're out of bed?"

His pale face looked cheery. Almost mischievous. "I have been for a while."

"I'm... glad to see it."

"It's a bright morning. Couldn't help but get up. I'm glad I did."

"Bright and cold. Close the shutters, or you'll catch your death." When he did, I threw myself into my dull task. My sore arms would regret it the following morning. At the time, it felt good to do something simple. Chopping firewood was a small achievement, something I couldn't do wrong, unlike speaking to Roderigo. After weeks spent wishing he would start talking in earnest, now that he was... all the charm that I used to deflect unsettling feelings was failing me.

"It's not that cold." Roderigo's voice came again, softer and closer. He stood on the inn's back steps steadily on his own two feet, a hesitant smile on his face. He was wearing the clothes I bought, and they made his trim body rugged and romantic. "I look good, don't I?"

I wiped my face with a sleeve. The air still bit, and sweat dried cold on my skin. "You do."

"You don't think it was foolish... to get up... without help?"

"No."

"It was like something unraveled inside me or some cage came undone, I felt so much stronger this morning I don't know why..." His voice trailed off. "These are comfortable." He stroked the material on his legs. "Thank you."

"That was the point of them." I said and picked up a pile of logs.

"Sorry to interrupt."

"Don't be."

He was quiet for a long time before he said, "How long have we stayed here?"

"A few days." My breath was coming in starts now. I brushed off the stump on which I'd been chopping wood and sat down. "You really don't remember?"

"I've been... solitary. More than a little... when you aren't listening to the world, everything kind of blends together, and time is less... less absolute. Sometimes that is a welcome thing. I haven't... been as ill, in body, as I've said I was. I just wanted... to be left alone, and you did that. But I meant it that this morning was clearer and brighter somehow, and I wanted come out to apologize and..." he choked off.

"Apologize? What for... sir?" I added the final word as an apology of its own. I did so whenever Roderigo's silence made me doubt the words I had just spoken. He flinched at the word as usual.

"I am many things, but I am not a sir..." Perhaps this meant he thought of us as equals. He'd never say so, but I could always imagine it. "Not now and not to you, not now..." His fists bunched in the fabric of his trousers, a deep red that looked warm as the embers of a fire.

"Why not now, Roderigo?"

His lips began quivering and his knuckles turned white.

In a moment I was at his side again, and placed my hands over his. "Roderigo – " I cut myself off, uncertain of what else to say beyond the sweet syllables of his name. "Are you alright?"

"Men don't cry."

"Where'd you hear that nonsense?"

He looked like a single tear would break him. So I started to tell a story. It was little more than embellished memory – and I even hate to embellish without cause. He breathed easier when it was done. He did not take my hands. Neither did he push them away. "Can I stay out here with you?"

"Yes, of course you can." He watched me in silence the rest of the morning; and when I went inside, he took the arm I offered.

No matter how strong Roderigo's body and soul grew, brilliant light no longer shone from his eyes. He smiled on the outside, and his smiles were still beautiful, but they were never deep. In order to draw happiness from him, I feigned some of my own and soon found it wasn't an act. The thrill that I felt every time he touched me, every time he smiled, didn't fade with time. An easy intimacy grew between us that made my heart race and believe there had to be something bright and golden still inside of him. Because if there wasn't, if I had imagined it, then I was a sodding fool, as Gonzalo would say, and a dreamer. I didn't want to have risked my life for a dream.

We traveled from town to town that winter and spring. I found work where I could. Time passed, and we spent it together. Roderigo was a dreamer, and his unwillingness to speak of his past did not mean he had little to say. By sundown of the day his mouth came unhinged, I found he had an opinion about everything – from the innkeeper's habit of twirling his wedding ring to the construction of the heavens, from the meaning of goodness to the meaning of love.

He confessed early on that our travels seemed "the sort of adventure that a boy in a gilded house grows up dreaming about." Those three months became a dream for me as well. Adventures and escapades I had done before. What was new and exciting was having a friend by my side. There had been other handsome men, with neat beards and bright eyes and skillful hands, who'd made my nights less lonely and other companions by light of day whom I had needed more than I'd loved. Never had I traveled so long with a dear friend. Later I counted up the days we spent together, but at the time I didn't want to. Every day was one closer to Roderigo's decision that he no longer needed me.

The first thunderstorm to hit after the shipwreck began, rip-roaring and rollicking, a month after Roderigo first walked without aid. He hated it. When he wasn't drumming the table with his fingertips, his toes tapped just as fast. He jabbered constantly, nervous and desperate to hear something other than the storm outside. He was talking about his childhood, a subject he'd never spoken of before, and I should have been drinking in his every word. But instead I itched to pin down his hands and feet and tell him to be quiet.

"...overhearing young men talking about their girls and realizing I knew nothing about it."

The tapping had ended. I looked up. "Nothing about what?" He blushed. "Oh,_ that_," I let the word linger. "You don't have to say a thing."

"I'm ashamed, really." He shrugged. "If there's one thing a man's not…"

"It's a virgin." He cringed at the word, almost as much as he did at _sir._ "It's not an insult. It's just a fact."

"Certain it wasn't a fact about you, when you were my age."

My lips turned into a hard line, and I counted to ten slowly. I knew he did not mean to insult, because he knew nothing of what he was saying. I had not blamed him for his innocence before, and now would be a hell of a time to start. I cleared my throat. "There's nothing to be ashamed of in a sheltered life."

"There's nothing to be envied…" Roderigo looked away. "But I don't know a thing about your life... so I shouldn't have said that." There was an unspoken question in his silence.

"Is this something you want to talk about?"

A loud thunderclap followed a flash of light outside, and his fingers started tapping again. I put a hand on top of his to stop the noise. He pulled away.

"Sorry... just stop. Please?"

He nodded and started tapping his toes.

"Perhaps... if I were more of a man... I could have stopped..."

"The storm? No matter how many conquests a man has, he can't stop a force of nature."

"Then what's the point of it?"

"The point of... making love?" He blushed again and would not look at me. "The point of trying to be a man?" His toes tapped faster, and his breath came in starts. My patience wore thin and my voice rose to match the thunder. "I want to comfort you, Roderigo. Please tell me how."

"You can't. No one can stop a force of nature." He spoke peevishly, as if he half expected me to halt the thunderstorm at his request. "I want to run away, but I can't..."

His brown eyes met mine, and against all logic, I understood him. "If you can't run, had you thought of facing it?"

"Facing what?"

I walked out the tavern's front door. Roderigo waited at the table nursing his drink until he saw that I was running outside and had no intention of coming back in. He ran to the threshold and halted. "What on earth are you doing?" I was, in fact, taking off my shirt and my boots and running out into the rain.

"I said to follow me!"

"My clothes will be ruined."

"It's water, Roderigo." I lifted my face into the downpour. "It's beautiful. Come out... please." On that last word my voice became a plea.

He pulled off his boots and his shirt and walked down the creaking steps into the storm. The wind blew wet hair into his face. "Alright. I did it. I'm going back inside now."

I took his hand, and he let me lead him around the side of the inn and to a wide field that let us see for miles. The rain had turned the sky a milky grey and drowned out the colors on land. Through that mist, rolling hills disappeared into the horizon. He stared into the downpour without blinking. "You're right... it's beautiful." I let go of his hand, but he stood staring into the distance like he had grown roots to that spot. "Why is it so beautiful?" he sounded angry and as though he wanted to cry. I had been wrong, terribly wrong.

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be. It's beautiful. It shouldn't be... but it is..." The wind picked up, throwing rain into our faces and blowing away Roderigo's frown. He closed his eyes and held up his hands. When he started to spin; I moved out of his way and stepped in a puddle. He shrieked when the cold water hit his legs and stomped, splashing back at me and laughing. I splashed him again. "Stop it," he said, giggling the whole time.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you."

He shoved me but his feet slipped and we both fell into the mud. I was afraid rolling on the ground would dampen his spirits again, but he wrestled with me, still giggling, until he pinned my wrists to the ground.

His face glowed, and the light in his eyes shone without restraint. A smile broke across his face. His fingers let go of my hands to run through my hair and trace circles in the mud on my cheeks until it washed away. He lowered his body to mine in a way that had not a thing to do with fighting. When he started drinking water from my lips, I unfroze, wrapped my arms around him, and kissed him back.

A bolt of lightning cracked the sky above us. Roderigo scrambled off of me, sputtering and held himself close. "P-please forgive me. I don't know what... came over me. Please just... forget this happened... I..." He started rocking back and forth. All desire to protect him deserted me, leaving only a burning frustration.

"For God's sake, if you want to cry, just let yourself cry, damn you!" I yelled. He buried his face in his knees and rocked back and forth. I wanted to shake him out of that tight ball. He thought that holding himself would protect him from whatever he was running from. He was wrong. "I mean it."

"What... am..." he gasped, "I... to do? What do you want... me... to do? I feel so damned helpless!" He slammed a fist on the ground, and water splashed high. "I hate it!" he screamed. His nose dripped with snot, and his fists slammed into his legs and into the ground. "I hate it! I did nothing and now I can do nothing. _So what do you want me to do?_"

My breath caught in my throat. If ever I had inspiring words planned, I couldn't remember them now. "I'm sorry, sir - Roderigo - please forgive me."

"It's not your fault. It's mine. It's all my fault." He wrapped his arms around his chest, but they slipped in the mud no matter how he tried to hold on. "All... my... fault..."


	5. The Malignancy of My Fate

_You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian, which I called Roderigo. My father was that Sebastian of Messaline, whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him myself and a sister, both born in an hour. If the heavens had been pleased, would we had so ended! But you, sir, altered that, for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned_.

~ _Twelfth Night_, 2.1

Sebastian of Messaline dressed hastily. He had said he would leave. For two weeks, he had told himself that he would leave, and today he would prove himself an honest man. He pulled his old clothes, the ones he'd almost drowned in, from his satchel. Antonio had washed the salt from them while Sebastian slept, in the days when he was half alive and all of him tears for Viola. They looked the worse for wear, but they made him feel different, and he wanted to feel different this morning. After three months of camaraderie as Roderigo with the kind of friend he could not keep, he wanted to feel like Sebastian again, the sort of man who would seek a place at Orsino's court and who didn't share a bed with a common sailor.

After wearing the loose-fitting clothes Antonio had bought for him, these pinched in unmentionable places, and the lace cuffs and collar itched. Sebastian held himself tall and looked in the bowl of water that was their mirror. His skin was darker, he noticed right away, but his freckles still stood out. His hair looked unruly and he liked it, but wondered if Orsino's courtiers would stick up their noses. But if they did he would bow to the duke in one smooth motion and explain that he, Sebastian of Messaline, his father's only son and the heir to his title, had been shipwrecked and had survived only by chance and the help of... What would he say?

The evening he kissed Antonio in the rain, Sebastian had decided there must be some property of rainwater that induced madness. There were too many stories of people kissing in the rain for it to be otherwise. He had prepared this clever explanation in case Antonio ever brought up the subject, but his friend never said a thing about it. Antonio would have appreciated his wittiness, and Sebastian moped at being denied the chance to show what he could do with words. He could turn reality on its head in a way that would spare both of them the need to understand what had happened between them.

That same night Sebastian couldn't sleep. He ran the clever explanation over and over in his mind, but still he tossed and turned. Out in that rainstorm he had felt joy for the first time since the shipwreck, but he had no right to find a new happiness if it meant forgetting Viola.

Emptying all those tears left a hollow space inside him, and his bed felt lonely. Alone in bed he had only his guilt and memories. He needed a present reality. He was naked – his only comfortable clothing was drying by the fire – and he knew his friend was as well, but that didn't bother him. And it was late, the time when logic often deserted him.

So he shook Antonio awake. "What?" the other man grumbled, moving his lips as little as possible, still clinging to sleep.

Sebastian couldn't decide what to say. _May I join you? _was simple and to the point, and made him far less vulnerable than _I cannot be at peace with myself tonight, and thought I might be at peace with you_. But his mouth would not open.

"What is it?" Antonio sat up in bed.

_I can't intrude upon him in this way. I pushed him away today, and I cannot go back on that decision. Besides, it's cruel to ask anything at this hour... _"I..."

"...can't sleep alone?"

"No, I can't."

Antonio pulled back the covers in his small bed, and when Sebastian lay down, put his arms around him, gently and unasked, as if he understood his emptiness perfectly. Sebastian fell asleep on his friend's chest, lulled by his steady heartbeat. Before he slept, though, he took in the feeling of his friend's smooth, hard body moving against his skin.

Antonio was a not a large man, and it seemed to Sebastian that he had borne the hardships of life all the more for it. His muscles were lean, but tough, and they strained at the confines of his skin. Soft golden hair gathered on his chest, but the rest of him looked absolutely smooth, and Sebastian felt sure one could be carried away by the ripples of his muscles like the motion of a powerful sea.

Lying beside a man like that, with all their clothes drying by the fire, who could blame Sebastian's thoughts for deserting the straight and narrow path? Who could blame him for imagining Antonio's calloused hands on his body, from his head to his naked toes? Or for imagining a part of that powerful man moving inside him? That thought brought a flush to his cheeks, but he couldn't shake it. He imagined Antonio kissing the back of his neck and shoulders and murmuring comforting words, and Sebastian's skin tingled all over just thinking of it.

When Sebastian had come down into the sailors' quarters, to ask where he could find the captain, and overheard talk of willing men and thrusting in what they had to offer, their words repulsed him. He spent the rest of that day quaking with disgust and wondering what anyone could find attractive about that act. Now that he remembered, Antonio had been there when he'd interrupted the sailors' talk and laughter, lying shirtless in his hammock, looking bored with the whole conversation. He'd seen ink wrapped around his arm and more peeking up from the waistband of his pants and wondered how much that would hurt. Why did poor men mark themselves permanently? Was it in an effort to add some beauty to their battered bodies? To give some meaning to their miserable lives?

He'd asked Antonio as much, in kinder words, six weeks into their strange new friendship. "I got these a few years ago," he answered, gesturing to where a picture of waves wrapped around his arm. He fiddled with the cloths that he always kept wrapped around his wrists and pulled his shirt back on, self-conscious. "So that I was marking my body, not just the rest of the world marking me." He stopped fidgeting, almost guilty. "It's a phoenix, the one you can't see." He gestured to his right thigh.

"A phoenix? Rising from the ashes? That's not too optimistic for you?"

He had sneered at that. "It's not intended to be optimistic. I just thought it looked beautiful."

Sebastian of Messaline shook himself, and splashed his face with water. It stung where he'd cut himself in hasty shaving, and his memories faded away. He decided against telling Orsino that he had wasted weeks in the company of a common sailor, wondering how he had painted his scarred body. That was something a younger Sebastian would never have wanted to know.

When one of their earliest tutors had impressed upon Sebastian and Viola the importance of knowing a person's place in the world and treating him or her accordingly, Viola looked confused.

"Why?" she had asked.

"Because you must not treat a servant like an equal."

"Why?" Her curls bounced as she shook her head.

"Because they will always be different from you. They will not understand you, and that's because they do not understand the nobler virtues of sacrifice and Christian moderation." Viola had wrinkled her nose, but Sebastian had drunk in the tutor's every word. Little Sebastian would be so disappointed in his elder self, who out of a desperate loneliness had crept into bed with a common sailor and stayed.

Sebastian knew he could have left for Illyria weeks ago with a kind thanks for the man who had saved him, and no one could have thought less of him for it. But the truth was he didn't want to. With Antonio, he felt safe, and with that safety, said things that he'd told no one else before. Losing Viola had left him empty inside – and he needed someone to fill that gap. That was all. But he had stayed far too long, long enough to admit that he wanted things Sebastian the nobleman had never thought to want.


	6. It Charges Me to Express Myself

Sebastian closed the door to the inn and fumbled with his hands as he walked towards Illyria. He wanted pockets, and had forgotten his old clothes didn't have them. You can hide so much in pockets: nerves, hopes, crossed fingers... all kinds of secret things. He took the path to the seashore, where he could see Orsino's palace clearly.

He looked out to sea and wished away his guilt. He could not have said goodbye to the man who had become his dearest friend. He knew that. Just like he knew that if he said a thing about love these past three months, he'd never be able to let go.

He had been sleeping soundly in Antonio's bed every night for two weeks following the storm, when he started at the sound of a sudden crash. He hadn't slept a wink that night, his mind too awake with wild fantasies, but that crash startled him even out of his indulgent rest. He never did find out what made the sound. He fidgeted, restless.

"You too?" Antonio's pillow muffled his voice.

"I'm sorry I woke you."

"You didn't. You're shaking. Are you cold?"

Sebastian said nothing to that, and Antonio rose from the bed and poked their fire, coaxing the coals out of their dark hiding places. Soft rain on the shutters sounded like his fingertips did, tapping whenever he was nervous... which he seemed to be now. Whether the rain was to blame, Sebastian could not say.

"Why did you rescue me, Antonio?"

"That's a question." One of the flames leapt up and illuminated Antonio's face. The ship on the waves painted on his arm tipped back and forth in shadows that flickered and spun like stormclouds. "Do I have to answer it?"

"I suppose not."

"You deserve to know." He rubbed his eyes.

"I don't. It's fine. Never mind. Come back to bed." Sebastian felt proud for keeping his voice steady. He wouldn't be nearly as cold with his friend inches away, surely. His shivering would stop then. It would.

Antonio sat before the fire for a long time. Sebastian rubbed his arms and gathered the bedclothes tighter around himself, but still he shivered. Watching the man tending the fire didn't make him calmer. When Antonio climbed back into the small bed they shared, Sebastian started when they touched and shook more than ever.

"It's alright. I'm cold too." Then he pulled away. It was only by a few inches, but Sebastian wanted to reach out and close the distance again. The wind whistled outside.

_Hold me, please. No, can't say that. Would you come a little closer? Perhaps...? _ "Would you mind... telling a story or saying anything."

"I don't have many happy stories. And a troubling one doesn't help anyone sleep."

"You know lots of happy stories."

"I've told you all I know."

"Then anything... a dream about the future?"

"I don't like to dream about the future," Antonio said and shifted further from Sebastian.

"Why not?"

"Those dreams don't come true."

"Is this supposed to be one of your lessons in reality?"

"No... I just don't like to dream." The conversation seemed to be over, but after a minute of silence Antonio continued. "It's not a good quality, Roderigo."

"I wish I could change it, then."

"That's a nice thought."

"Do you have no dreams at all?"

"A few... the ones I think about when dreaming can't be helped. But they're just dreams, and I don't want to talk about them." He was still staring into the fire, and Sebastian stopped shivering.

"Antonio?"

"Yes?"

"Would you come a little closer?"

The way the shadows fell, Sebastian couldn't see Antonio's face clearly, and he imagined a dozen scornful expressions that his friend could be putting on in cover of darkness. But after what felt like a full minute, he felt warm breath on his cheek.

"Is this what you mean? Or am I being inappropriate, sir?"

Sebastian sprang up, and yelled down at his friend. "Sir! Why do you call me sir? And always at the oddest times!"

"I didn't – "

"Because the only reason I can think of for you to call me that..." Really, this man ought to have called him "sir" from the start and everything they had done was inappropriate, and Sebastian thought that if he had to sustain the contradiction one more minute he'd – "You don't call a man 'sir' whom you saved from certain death and you don't call a man 'sir' with whom you share... anything! For god's sake, Antonio, I'm sleeping in your bed! And you're asking if sleeping a little closer to me – after I have asked you to – is appropriate? I think it's entirely appropriate." There was only a little rain tonight, but it had not touched him so he feared he could not claim madness.

Sebastian reached out and his hand brushed against stubble. It tickled his palm. His fingers found Antonio's lips, and he kissed them.

When Antonio did nothing in return, Sebastian realized he might respond to his touch with worse than a simple "No." Antonio might think this presumption – that his unspoken dreams had anything to do with Sebastian – warranted a fist to the face. Sebastian had never been punched before, and Antonio's fists could do damage. He cursed himself for not thinking of that before.

Antonio's breathing was coming in starts, but still he said nothing. Perhaps saying nothing was his friend's form of politeness, and Sebastian should take it. He turned away to face the wall, but Antonio pulled him back. He pinned Sebastian to their small bed and kissed him back. Antonio kissed him until Sebastian's bones turned to water, and he found all his limbs twining around the figure above him.

"Roderigo..." Antonio spoke with so much tenderness, Sebastian would have given anything to hear his own name in place of the one he had given, but he knew that confession would end this immediately. "Tell me what you want."

"No! I... I hardly know... anything..."

"But this is something you want?" he asked, cupping Sebastian's cheek.

"Stop asking me about it."

"Why shouldn't I?"

_Because I know nothing. Because telling you exactly how little I know would humiliate me. Because "virgin" is a very exotic word, but such an awkward thing._ It had all felt wonderful, but... "I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

_Of diving too deep into the world, of playing havoc with your devotion, of realizing this is more than a mere distraction..._

"Of me?"

"No, never." Sebastian brushed a strand of Antonio's hair from his eyes. His hand lingered. "Of making myself a fool." He still shook and thought maybe that his hands had a life of their own, because he hadn't decided to stroke his friend's face or to run his fingers across his lips. When Antonio spoke again, his lips caressed Sebastian's fingers.

"I'm afraid I can't comfort you about that. Every man who..."

"Every man who... what?"

He shook his head. "It's nothing. I only asked you because... " His arms also shook, surely with the effort of holding himself up. "...because I don't want to take anything from you."

Sebastian's hands laced through Antonio's hair of their own accord, but he decided clearly on each word he spoke. "I want you to touch me. I don't know exactly how..." _or why_ "but I know that's what I want."

"Then I may kiss you again?"

"Please."

This kiss lasted the longest of all, and with hands and with sighs Sebastian guided his lover's hands over his body. This wasn't the sex he had blushed over in natural philosophy tutorials or the crass talk of the sailors below deck. Smooth touches and sounds he had not known he could make carried him higher and higher until he was soaring.

In the weeks that followed they had played out all sorts of fantasies, the greatest one being that this wasn't play at all, but the life that he had missed for nineteen years spent in a gilded, lonely house with a sister he would never see again. That he could afford to measure his life in warmth and passion instead of days and nights.

Until last night, when the play ended entirely.


	7. That I May Bear My Evils Alone

"Do my hands feel any different tonight," Sebastian asked as they sat by their window the night before he left for good, looking out to sea. It was springtime, and the days were longer. The sky was ablaze with brilliant colors, and they were reflected in the water. Antonio was drawn to the sea, Sebastian had noticed. He could only travel inland for so long before bringing them both back to the shore.

"Should they?"

"I've got calluses – look!" He had worked hard for them, too.

Antonio looked down at their joined hands. "I know you think I judge you for your soft upbringing, but I don't."

He did judge him, Sebastian knew, and it grated that Antonio would not admit it. "You mistake me, my friend. These changes are not to please you, they are to please me."

"Why do they please you?"

He rubbed his fingertips together. "I feel like I know something of life."

"We have not seen much of life on this journey."

"What haven't we seen?" Sebastian asked. Antonio smiled in his grown-up, infuriating way. "What haven't we seen?"

"All sorts of things."

"Like what?"

"Like things..." he shrugged, and his thumb rubbed circles on Sebastian's hand.

"Things I wouldn't be able to understand?" Sebastian had been sitting on the windowsill, one leg drawn to his chest. He swung it around and faced the man who was now avoiding his eyes.

"I never said that."

"You implied it." And to his credit Antonio did not deny it.

The sleeve of Antonio's shirt was untied, and it revealed one of the nastier scars Sebastian had seen. It snaked up his arm past the elbow. Sebastian traced it with his thumb. "How did you get this?"

"I never told you?"

"You never told me how you got any of your scars... some of which I'm sure I've never seen." For all of their intimacy, Antonio avoided Sebastian's gaze whenever it lingered on any of his many blemishes.

"That's true."

"How did you get them?" His face was still hard, determined. He wasn't a child anymore, and he wanted Antonio to treat him accordingly.

"All of them?"

"I'd like to know."

Antonio rose from his seat by the window and crossed the room. "What if I don't want to tell you?"

"I think you do." Sebastian crossed his arms. "But you think me too much of a child to face the truth."

They glared at each other long and hard. Antonio's mean look was intimidating indeed, but he had not grown up with a little sister. Sebastian simply stood with his arms crossed and waited, reciting his times tables and Latin conjugations until Antonio screwed up his face. "Fine!" He pulled off his shirt and began telling the tale of every mark on his body.

At first Sebastian flushed with the thrill of it all. Some of these stories were full of adventure, and he glowed with pride at hearing them, reliving them with his dearest friend so close to his side. Caught up in the adrenaline of memory, he clearly imagined metal and wood and human flesh and bone breaking his lover's skin. Over and over again.

He couldn't have been more than six when he ran in desperate worry to his father with a small cut on his hand. He had seen one the scars on his groom's arm and he was afraid he, too, would be left with mark, a constant reminder of his pain. He wouldn't be able to look at his hands without remembering his humiliating fall from the estate wall that he told Viola he could scale. His father assured him all would be well, and all was. The scratch faded without a trace.

These ugly, fat, and wrinkled patches of skin told the story of a man's life, and as Antonio removed item of clothing after item of clothing, Sebastian saw that it had been a life full of pain. He wanted to be ill.

He knew then that if he stayed to hear the whole story, he would never be able to see the world he had once known clearly again, that no matter what he wanted, he could never go back to the safe and beautiful life his father and family would have wanted him to lead.

"Stop!" he covered his face and ran out of their room. He ran down the street and towards the sea, but he did not cry. Antonio had taken the gilded house that he remembered so well, upturned it and shook the contents down onto the ground, and he hated him for it.

The sky was bleeding into the sea now, and darkness was falling. Reflected in the sea, Orsino's palace glittered with a hundred lights. It was not far, and his strong body could walk the distance in half a day. The castle was surrounded by warm, welcoming walls lit up against the night. He'd find another beautiful person there, a woman with fair hair whose only concern was her new gown, or a man, as it seemed his desires could tend, whose flawless skin was topped with a glorious layer of fat. He would be happy there, and he would never try to scale the walls again.

"Roderigo?" Antonio was running along the shore. He had forgotten his boots and his feet threw up a train of sand in his wake. "Roderigo, I am so sorry."

"No, listen to me, please – "

"No, listen to me!" He fell to his knees in front of Sebastian and took his hands. He kissed each one in turn. "I should have trusted you sooner. I should have told you those stories in turn, over weeks, not all in one night. And I could've been gentler with my words. Not all my stories are as bad as I made them seem. I was cruel, and you deserved not a word of it. Please forgive me. I love you."

The word slipped from his lover's lips in moments of passion or bliss, but Sebastian never answered it. He kissed Antonio until they forgot what the words had been about, why they were standing barefoot on the seashore as the stars winked on. That warm night Sebastian made love with a passion he hadn't known he'd possessed, and rendered his scarred lover speechless with joy.

And the next morning he left without a word.


End file.
